New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Native bands. When the panel came to an agreement with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Native bands, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is categorically favored in New Mexico. All kinds of operators look for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicians are through batting over gaming as a hot button matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on November 17, 2021, 4:25 am and is filed under Casino. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.